Last Wednesday I went on a supermarket tour; the idea was to learn to read labels, to know what's not on labels, and a highlight on the difference between Australian labels and ours, as a lot of our food come from Australia, among other countries. At the end of the tour, we got a goodie bag.I've seen these before, but hadn't had one because yonks ago I bought some nice cotton ones shaped like a plastic shopping bag. From a distance the logo looked like a green-lipped mussel, which is a specialty of the region. I realized Thursday morning that it was a smiley plastic bag!
We're trying to get rid of plastic bags, yeah? So, why use a happy plastic bag as a "mascot"? It's like anti-whalers using a cute harpoon, or gun-control lobby using a smiley pistol as their symbols, I thought... Any other examples?
No matter, I'm not against recyclable bags...
In Canada a few smaller municipalities have banned plastic bags altogether. The one that comes to mind is Leaf Rapids, Manitoba.
ReplyDeleteWhole Foods in Vancouver stopped offering plastic bags recently and were giving away the reusable ones for a week or so.
Banning plastic bags seems to be a hot topic and of course the plastics industry has pulled out all the stops in an attempt to defend the bags.
A key factor in eliminating plastic bags, I think, is implementing a system for households to compost kitchen waste. A lot of households use the bags for garbage bags.
Yes, we all definatelly have to get rid off plastic bags! Hopefully several measures have been taking place in that direction...
ReplyDeleteGreetings
I'm all for reducing the use of plastic, and for cutting back on plastic bags, but looking at our rubbish, the bags are the least of our worries. At least we reuse those, too. It's the plastic containers and wraps that we can't reuse, or the gazillion containers that I do save, but then our storage overflows with them, and I have to get rid of.
ReplyDeleteWe used to do this once every two years or so; now, with increased use of plastic containers, getting rid of them twice a year is hardly often enough, unfortunately.